Family at the Foreside We laughed, we cried, we made a racket BY ANDY KING
	The Foreside Tavern and Side Bar The Foreside Tavern and Side Bar 270 US Rt. 1, Falmouth | 207.781.4255 | Sun-Wed 11 am to 10 pm, Thurs-Sat 11 am to 1 am | www.foresidetavern.com

I’m a family guy now. I have a kid and a wife, and it’s nice to know that there are a few restaurants out there that promote themselves as family restaurants; that is, places where you won’t feel embarrassed if your child is a little loud, or, on occasion, very loud. After all, what are families while dining out if not potentially screaming?

There are a couple of these family joints within carshot of Portland. I reported a while back that the "family" part is why I liked Maverick’s, in the Public Market, and how much I appreciated it when a helpful server entertained my daughter while wife Jackie and I shoveled a lunch down our throats at Shay’s, on Monument Square (that’s the way you eat sometimes when you’re dealing with the ticking time bomb that is your baby).

I also understand that not every restaurant is appropriate for kid presence, and I respect that the multiple hundred bones you’re laying down at Hugo’s probably does not include a mother singing the "Lumpa Lumpa" song to get her baby to quiet down during the pork belly course.

So, again, I look at the family restaurant as a nice little safe haven where we can all eat and cry, depending on who’s grumpy.

The Foreside Tavern and Side Bar, formerly Moose Crossing, has a motto which pretty much says what it’s good for: "Where Friends and Family Meet." It has a spacious dining area with cathedral ceilings, great for sucking up noise, and although the black-and-white color scheme is a little more sterile than many family restaurants I’ve been to, it’s clean and tidy just the same. The Side Bar is a little swanker; leather couches, televisions, "mind-boggling drink specials" — according to their Web site — and even a roaring fireplace if the weather is accommodating enough.

I didn’t go to the bar, though. My mind is usually boggled enough.

What I’m trying to say is that as far as layout goes, the Foreside Tavern pretty much has all of the necessary components to fulfill its goal of being a family restaurant. Safe haven, located. If the food is exceptionally good, well then, bonus.

The problem is, this particular restaurant doesn’t serve exceptionally good food, and they’ve jacked up the prices a bit on what they do offer. I fully understand that if you’re going to serve rack of lamb in the mid-teen dollar range (a good price), you have to go ahead and serve fish tacos for a similar price (a terrible price) to make up the loss. But if the goal is to have a nice family place, which they have, they should try to serve food that has nice family prices attached so daddy and mommy don’t have to sell their children to pay for the meal.

It’s not that bad, but some things stood out as glaring problems on steepish plates: the flour tacos came out still wrapped in tin foil and were served with cold grated cheese (they were also billed as "Tacos," presented by our server as "Quesadillas," and actually were "Fajitas," as I had to build them myself). The balsamic reduction on the strawberry, goat cheese, and chicken salad (a nice concept) was reduced to a bitter paste, and was painfully thin on the chicken end for the price.

BUT: The fried calamari was hot, crisp, and tender. The mussels were nice and sweet, with tasty anise shallot butter (great for dipping the anemic, pre-frozen breadstick that came with it); the beer was cold; and the homemade ginger ale was fantabulous. And that’s a word I don’t use often.

There is a market out there for a family restaurant that consciously tries to put food on the table that is not only family friendly, but of a quality that can keep all ages interested. There’s an entire world of food out there that is completely accessible and fun for even those taking their first bites. I’ll never forget eating at Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, and seeing a six- or seven-year-old eagerly waiting for his father to put mignonette on an oyster so he could slurp it down. Will that kid grow up to appreciate fresh, buy local, and support organic? You bet.

But until Utopia rears her flaxen head, parents sometimes have to take what they can get. The Foreside Tavern is one of those places that understands the value of the family restaurant; they just might have to put some more emphasis on understanding the parent’s value of their day or night out.

after hours: Of course, remember that there is a whole "Tavern" side of things, which isn’t for the kiddies. It’s open late, so give them a call so see what bands are playing.